Jonathan Bagg

Jonathan Bagg is Professor of the Practice at Duke University. His career with the Ciompi Quartet includes hundreds of concerts across the U.S. and around the word, as well as dozens of recordings. Currently co-Artistic Director of Electric Earth Concerts in New Hampshire, he also directed the Monadnock Music festival from 2007-2011. His festival programming has included creative collaborations between authors, poets, and choreographers resulting in many newly commissioned works, including, in 2018, “A Forest Unfolding”, an oratorio developed with author Richard Powers. Bagg directs the chamber music program at Duke, where he has served as interim Chair, Director of Undergraduate Studies, and is currently Director of Performance. He is principal viola of CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, where in 2017 he was featured as soloist in Mozart’s Sinfonie Concertante. As a chamber musician he has performed at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, the Eastern Music Festival, and the Highlands, NC, Mohawk Trail, and Castle Hill festivals.

Bagg’s 2014 CD on Albany records, tiled “Elation” brings together several works he commissioned, including a sonata and trio by Duke colleague Stephen Jaffe and a trio by Scott Lindroth, also on the Duke faculty. Other solo CDs (Centaur) contain music for viola and piano by Robert and Clara Schumann, and by the Viennese composer Robert Fuchs (1847-1927). Contemporary solo works by Arthur Levering, Malcolm Peyton, Robert Ward, and Donald Wheelock are on Bridge, Albany, Centaur and Gasparo Records. Collaborations include many notable musicians, including pianists Menahem Pressler and Bella Davidovich, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon, and the Tokyo and Borromeo Quartets.

Before moving to Duke he performed with many of New England’s most prominent musical organizations, appearing often with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Handel and Haydn Society, and serving as principal viola for the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra. He graduated with honors from both Yale University (BA) and the New England Conservatory (MM), where he was a student of Steven Ansell and Walter Trampler.